Gacked my first mill project

[Makintrax73]

But managed to save it.

Metal supplier was late, so decided my first project on the new to me milling machine would be with what's on hand.

Found some 1.75" round cast iron, and 1/2" drill rod. Figured a fly cutter was in there somewhere.

All was going according to plan until boring the arbor hole. I won't go into detail but my boring bar was rubbing and opened that cast iron up to several thou bigger than 1/2"

I figured concentricity isn't of the utmost in a flycutter so pressed on. Epoxy the arbor into the body. The drill and tap it for what I think is called a "scotch pin"(?). You can see the offset hole that bisects both parts. Seems to hold and work fine, despite the mistake.

 

[Shotgun]

You may want to look at tramming your head. Flycutters do an excellent job of showing when they're out. If you don't see tooling marks going both ways, you might have adjustments to do.

 

[jbobb1]

The drill and tap it for what I think is called a "scotch pin"(?). You can see the offset hole that bisects both parts. Seems to hold and work fine, despite the mistake.

We always referred that as "staking"

 

[Janderso]

Nice job man!
What angle did you use ?
The reason I ask is Youtube has plenty of flycutter videos that show different angles
I think I chose 15 degrees.

 

[Makintrax73]

Nice job man!
What angle did you use ?
The reason I ask is Youtube has plenty of flycutter videos that show different angles
I think I chose 15 degrees.

Thanks.

5 degrees. I noticed a lot of different angles used also. Figured shallow would be less milling and less out of balance. We'll see how it works. At least it makes a chip!

 

[homebrewed]

A larger radius on the cutting tip likely would reduce the milling marks some. And +1 on the suggestion of checking the tram of your milling head.

I don't often use my fly cutter but it can be really handy in some situations. Vibration can be an issue on smaller milling machines (like mine) but keeping the RPMs down along with the feed rate work OK.

 

[Parlo]

Try to set the cutting diameter just larger than the part width for less impact on the tool.